Fun fact: There is no Chinese takeout in Malibu. There's barely even any takeout, period. Postmates? Nope. Grubhub? Doordash? Freakin' Instacart?!
...Nothing.
On the plus side, the absence of Postmates is saving me a boatload of money (my habit of ordering Sugarfish delivery whenever Kendrick had the kids was giving my financial planner palpitations). On the negative side, it means I cannot get Chinese takeout, and this is not an acceptable way to live.
Officially an adult...still take bathroom selfies tho
My mother once said to me, "You always kind of feel like you're 22 years old." And she was right, in some ways. For example, I don't know that you ever truly adjust to the fact that you are now capable of injuring yourself by bending over too fast. Or putting on a jacket. Or sleeping. (I have hurt myself doing all of these things.)
But she's not completely right; in some ways I feel precisely the age that I am. My 22-year-old self specialized in the fields of watching Elimidate marathons and entitlement, and while I still dabble in both of those (rather enjoyable) endeavors, the knowledge that I have acquired in the 16 years since falls into the realm of "enormous." I wasn't totally irresponsible as a twentysomething - I'd had a job since I was 12, so I was decently familiar with the idea of money management and taxes and such - but I couldn't have told you what a HELOC was on pain of death.
Here is an odd way to start a post about pasta and cheese:
I've decided to try limiting my gluten and dairy!
(EXCELLENT start to the experiment, I know. But I figured what the hell, let's go out with a bang.)
Here is my kitchen. It's where I spend perhaps 75% of my day. There's the cooking and puttering and such, but those barstools are also my writing spot, the kids' homework spot, and (more often than not, alas) where we eat dinner, with the kids sitting on the stools and me leaning over the countertop on the other side (whatever, formal sit-down dinners are overrated).
There's something that my kitchen's missing, though.
When we were looking for our new house, we knew that we needed a space for guests. My family lives in Texas, and we love having them out to visit. We also have friends who regularly come to Los Angeles, so we almost always have someone staying with us. When we first toured our new house, we noted the detached doctor’s office behind the house, which had three rooms – a waiting room, a bathroom, and a main office. I knew that with a little work we could convert the space into something that would allow us to comfortably host frequent visitors.
Main room, before
